


Portrait of a Young Man

by bocje_ce_ustu



Category: Trance (2013), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Trance (2013), Dub-Con/Non-Con Elements, Dubious Consent, Dysfunctional Relationships, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Non-Graphic Violence, Period-Typical Homophobia, Rough Sex, Trance!FusionFic, We're sometime between the 60s and the 70s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 16:06:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5096792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bocje_ce_ustu/pseuds/bocje_ce_ustu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Some things”, he begins quietly, “are better left alone. Are you sure you want to remember, Erik?”<br/>Erik’s only answer is a low growl from the back of his throat. Charles braces himself and prays he can divert Erik’s attention enough that he’ll forget about the gun he’s pointing at Logan, tied to the wheel in the front. He begins.<br/>“So… it’s a year and a half earlier. You suffer from nightmares. Every night your past comes back and haunts you. A friend of yours recommends a hypnotherapist, so you go to meet him.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Portrait of a Young Man

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this lovely gif](http://cakeis.tumblr.com/post/49838292083/line-x) by Cakeis.  
> Title comes from Raphael's painting of the same name missing since World War II.  
> Thanks to Novecento who, as usual, grapples with my hideous grammar.

 

 

**_“What have you done to me?”_ **

**_Erik is furious. He’s confused. Charles knew this would come._ **

**_“Some things”, he begins quietly, “are better left alone. Are you sure you want to remember, Erik?”_ **

**_Erik’s only answer is a low growl from the back of his throat. Charles braces himself and prays he can divert Erik’s attention enough that he’ll forget about the gun he’s pointing at Logan, tied to the wheel in the front. He begins._ **

**_“So… it’s a year and a half earlier. You suffer from nightmares. Every night your past comes back and haunts you. A friend of yours recommends a hypnotherapist, so you go to meet him.”_ **

 

“Erik Lehnsherr”, Jean says, ushering a tall, dark stranger in and closing the office door right behind him. Charles thanks her and stands to welcome his new client, holding out a hand. “Hi, I’m Charles Xavier.”

The man has a strong, solid grip and grey eyes that pierce right through him.

“Erik Lehnsherr. Nice to meet you.”

“You too.” Charles motions him to the chair this side of his desk. “Have a seat.”

Erik nods and pulls back the chair as Charles circles his desk and sits back down in his own. When they’re both settled and he notices Erik picking nervously at his nails, he offers him an encouraging smile. It seems to work, as Erik seems to forget about his hands entirely and fixes his gaze back onto him.

“So… what would you like to talk about?”

Erik clears his throat and begins, “I am… dealing with nightmares.”

Charles nods, urging him on. The smile on his lips dies instantly when Erik rolls his sleeve up and the light catches on the numbers on his forearm.

 

**_“You get along well. He can’t make your nightmares go away, but he fights them with you, working to add a certain clarity to them that seals them to the past, where they can’t come back from and haunt you anymore. At the same time, he brings out the brightest parts of you, your better memories, and day by day, your dreams change.”_ **

 

“Artist?”

Erik chuckles, the faintest hint of a blush gracing his cheeks as he moves his rook forward. “Actually I’ve always been rather taken with sculptures… not so much marble as metalwork, such as iron, gold and bronze. The crafts of forging and molding have always had a certain appeal to me. You see, metal is hard but also pliable, ductile in ways marble and stone aren’t. If you’ve gone wrong somewhere or the object is ruined you can start anew, using the same material. A new piece comes to life from the old one. Renovation through destruction.” Erik pauses for a few seconds contemplating the poetry in his musings, then his eyes focus again on Charles. “What about you? What did young Charles Xavier want to do when he’d grow up?”

Charles moves a pawn right in Erik’s way. “It’s kinda lame, actually.”

“Firefighter, I knew it.” Erik fakes a disproving scowl as he proceeds to take Charles’ pawn with his bishop.

“Teacher”, he admits, focusing again on the chessboard to figure out his chances in the game. Erik’s succeeded in distracting him again with sweet talk.

“That was my second guess”, Erik replies, and Charles can almost feel the smile in his voice.

 

**_“You grow close to the therapist.”_ **

 

The first kiss takes him completely off-guard. It’s nothing more than a press of lips on lips, but it comes as a revelation that freezes him in place, unable to react in any way. This revelation is not about Erik’s feelings for him or the possibility that he may act upon them. It isn’t about his own feelings either. Both things have been in the air for some time, inching closer with every session, in every word and glance passing between them. What Charles realizes, in that brief moment in time when Erik’s lips touch his, is that what he wants to do and what he ought to are completely different things. It’s a feeling that, from that point in his life onwards, will never cease to manifest whenever Erik is with him.

Erik pulls away and clears his throat. “I need to be in Geneva for a couple of weeks.”

Charles looks up at him and wonders if he too is just as flushed as Erik looks. “We’ll have to reschedule, then”, he croaks out as soon as his jaw starts working again.

Erik offers him a timid smile before he steps away from the window sill and out of the office.

 

**_“Too close. And so you begin an affair.”_ **

 

“You should really consider a vacation.” Erik’s quiet murmur and his fingers drawing haphazard patterns on Charles’ belly are possibly the only things keeping his conscience from drifting away in a warm, satisfied slumber.

“I might need one, if we keep going on like this. I’m an old man, you know.”

Erik chuckles – a loving, lovely sound – and leans in closer to kiss his temple. “Paris, maybe?”

Charles turns his head to look back at him, catching a glint of mischief in Erik’s eyes.

“I may have bought two tickets”, Erik says casually, resuming his mindless drawings a bit lower on Charles’ skin.

Charles raises an eyebrow, amused. “Entirely by mistake, I guess.”

“Absolutely”, Erik replies very seriously. “Thing is, I can’t really get a refund.”

“I see”, Charles says, thoughtfully. “When do we leave?”

 

**_He knows that it’s wrong, that he shouldn’t do this. You’re a client. You’re a man. But he can’t help it._ **

 

“Wait-- wait a second.” Erik’s hand slides up his thigh and stops there, claiming his attention.

Charles frowns, sinking back on him and keeping as still as he can manage with his body screaming a whole range of different ideas. “Is something wrong, love?”

Erik reaches up with a hand and tugs Charles’ chin down and a bit to the left. Then he looks at him as if Charles were a work of art.

“Like this. You look just like the _Farnese Antinous_.”

Charles chuckles. “I bet it’s the nose that does the trick.”

“Hadrian would be so envious right now.”

 

**_“You fall in love with a kind of perfection. The kind you like.”_ **

 

“Come on! You know you know it.” Erik beams at him like a child, coat draped over his head and arms dangling out of it ominously, and Charles feels a matching grin spreading on his own face.

“Alright. Let’s see…” He taps a finger to his chin, pondering. “Nessie! You’re Nessie.”

Erik scowls. “Seriously? No, it’s not Nessie.”

“A banshee, then.”

“No, not a banshee either. It’s the Goya. The _Witches In The Air_ I was telling you about.”

Charles clucks his tongue, feigning disappointment. “You’re all work and no fun.”

“I _can_ be fun”, Erik smirks and topples him over the couch, nestling them both under his coat.

 

**_“But it’s not enough. He says he’s not ready to be out in the open yet. He’s afraid of losing his job. And as he becomes more and more paranoid…”_ **

 

“Not here.”

He knows he’s said that a million times, that it’s pretty much the only thing Erik hears from him outside the privacy of their home. That doesn’t mean he can’t see a small flicker of light going off behind Erik’s eyes every time.

There are bigger bumps on the road too. A hand swiping away all the things lying on the table, sending them scattering on the floor with a clutter of broken glass and chess pieces. Erik’s eyes blazing, his own cheeks aflame in distress. Maybe that’s when everything comes crumbling down. With his breath hitching, his voice breaking and the foul taste of shame in his mouth.

“Don’t even think for a minute that I don’t want that too!”, he shouts, his nails digging hard into his fist. “It’s just— complicated. People in my line of work are expected to be reliable, _trustworthy_ … My clients need to feel at ease with m--”

“Which of course they won’t, if they’re afraid you might stick your dick up their ass one minute or the other!”, Erik cuts him off with a snarl.

“That’s not what I meant and you _know_ that. No one will take me seriously anymore if word goes out that I’m sleeping with one of my clients.”

Erik looks taken aback, mouth hanging open as he seems to have forgotten what words he wanted to throw back at him next. Then his eyes harden and his jaw tightens as every single bit of anger, frustration and despise falls back in place on his face. “Surely you must have a lot of clients you don’t want to upset in Paris.”

Charles cringes. There’s no way he can deny what Erik is implying. He _is_ ashamed, knows he _will_ be if—when someone finds out about them, and their being therapist and client is only a part of the story. He hangs his head, defeated, and tells Erik the only thing he knows will always ring true.

“You know I love you.”

And just like that, Erik’s anger deflates, and a grieving, looming sadness fills the air between them.

“I love you too” he sighs, shoulder brushing Charles’ as he walks across the room to the broom closet, “but I’m tired of hiding.”

 

**_“…you become possessive, jealous. Slowly the fear of losing him begins to consume you.”_ **

 

Erik’s eyes look strange, almost glazed over, when Charles hangs up the phone.

“Who was that?”

“Just Hank. He asked me to switch turns at the office on Friday.”

 

 **_“You believe he’ll choose the easy way, that someday he’ll meet somebody else, somebody_ ** **safe _, and cast you aside like some mindless experiment.”_**

 

“Cute thing, isn’t she? Maybe you’d rather dine with her!”

Erik shoves the shaking waitress down in his chair and storms out of the front door.

The eyes of the whole restaurant follow him as he apologizes to the poor girl and quietly makes his way towards the counter.

 

**_“He knows you too well now.”_ **

 

He nearly drops the painting when he feels Erik’s breath ghosting on the nape of his neck.

“It’s been you all along.” It’s easier to talk without looking around, keeping his eyes trained on the portrait in his hands. The young man in the portrait, confident in his fur coat and tipped-back beret, stares back at him in mild amusement. “All those miraculous recoveries of Nazi plundered artefacts Delancy’s has been boasting about… It was you.”

“It was _us_.” Erik tugs him around, hands settling on Charles’ hips. He doesn’t look angry nor betrayed by Charles’ discovery. No, the smile playing on Erik’s lips is _proud_ , as if Charles has at last given him the right answer to all of his questions. “You gave me the strength to face my nightmares… my memories, Charles, you gave me the courage I needed to look them in the eye, so they wouldn’t hurt me anymore, and I did. I looked at them, really looked at them, and I remembered. Their faces, their names, the places and details my mind was too scared to confront on its own.”

“Your trips to Europe…” Charles tries hard to keep his eyes on Erik’s face, but his gaze wavers between it and the painting now shielded between them, “Retrieving high-priced pieces for the auctions, you said.”

“Yes.” Erik’s fingers stroke his hips lightly, an intimate gesture he usually reserves for when he wants to comfort him. Dread pools at the bottom of Charles’ stomach. He has to ask and mustn’t. He doesn’t know if he wants to know anymore.

“What happened to its owner?” Charles hates how his voice cracks mid-sentence, turning into nothing more than a whisper by the end. Erik’s hands freeze on his hips, and his next words fight their way out of his teeth.

“He wasn’t its owner. He had stolen it from its rightful owner.” Then his voice softens a little. “I’m almost there, Charles.” Erik pries the painting out of his hands with utmost care and sets it back in its case.

They don’t talk about it anymore. A few days later, the painting is gone. A week after that, so is Erik, leaving Charles in the embarrassing position of hoping for Erik to be back to him safe and sound (which would mean another man has paid with his life and that many, many others would pay in the future), and not to be back at all (which would mean that in some corner of this world some ruthless man has yet again escaped his sentence) at the same time.

However, when the key turns in its lock and Erik’s face reappears at his door, relief drowns away every other feeling and hope comes creeping in. Hope that this can be fixed. Charles knows for certain they can fix this. He _has_ to fix this. He’s the one who meddled with Erik’s memories in the first place, it’s his responsibility now.

So when he finds Erik pack his travel bag again, two months later, he sits on their bed and places a hand over his, stopping him.

“You can talk to me about it. I wish you would.”

Erik pries his hand away from under Charles’, resuming his preparations.

“Last time we talked you flinched as if you expected me to kill you and burn your body.”

“Last time I was scared, yes”, Charles concedes, carefully keeping his voice low and steady. “But I wasn’t scared of you, Erik, I could never be scared of you. It’s your feelings that frighten me.” He looks up at Erik and leans in, placing a hand over his chest in the hope of better conveying the message. “This anger you’re carrying inside… you have every right to feel it, but it won’t do you any good to act upon it. Killing those men, however despicable they may be, won’t erase the pain they made you feel. If I’d known the therapy would have this effect on you I would have stopped it, I swear.”

Erik shakes in head, a horrible, hollow laugh bubbling up from his chest. “You don’t understand, Charles.” He grabs Charles’ hand, almost crushing his fingers in his hold, and pounds it over his own heart. “This pain… How could you? A golden boy who’s always lived in luxury, who’s never had to struggle for his right _to be alive_ … I’m sorry, but you don’t get to tell me how _I_ should feel.”

Charles bites his tongue, hard. It won’t let his own childhood memories come in between them now. Only Erik matters now.

“You’re right, I don’t understand at all, but this I can tell you: revenge won’t change a thing. You’ll still feel every bit as miserable, every bit as helpless as you do now. The nightmares won’t go away, Erik, they never will. But you can let them go, you can show the world you’ve survived, that they didn’t get to dictate your life after all.” His throat clamps down, feeling sore, and he’s vaguely aware he’s ended up shouting after all.

Erik laughs, bitter. “Survived, right.” He goes back to his luggage and zips it shut.

Charles grasps his arm. “Please, Erik.” Erik shrugs him off with a hiss. “Don’t try to stop me, ‘cause I won’t.”

Then he’s out of the room, bag slung over his shoulder. Charles springs up from the bed and he’s right in front of him when Erik makes for the exit.

“Charles, move away from the door. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Charles grips the doorframe harder between his fingers. “I know. I know you won’t hurt me. You’re so much more than this, Erik, I believe in--”

He’s out before he even reaches the floor, his cheekbone burning and his voice and Erik’s mingling in a pained cry.

The door opens and closes behind him.

 

**_“He knows that when the time comes you will have to choose, and you won’t choose him.”_ **

 

When Charles gets home from his office, one night, Erik’s out on the landing in front of their apartment door, his gun aimed at Sebastian Shaw’s head. Charles knows he has to think fast. The words tumble out of his mouth like water running through a mill.

“Erik, this is not how you’ll have your peace of mind. Calm yourself, we can sort it out… sort it out together, like we always do, right? You and me.”

“Charles, can’t you see?” There’s a tear threatening to fall from Erik’s eye, and he wipes it away furiously with his free hand. The hand holding the gun doesn’t waver, and so does the manic grin on his face. “There is no peace.”

Erik’s eyes are staring at something far away, decades from the present. Charles realizes he can’t reach Erik anymore, so he does the only thing he knows will save him, his last attempt at saving Erik from himself. He leaps forward, trying to push Shaw out of harm’s way. But Shaw is already lashing out like a preyed animal, making a run for the stairs, and when Charles enters his trajectory he shoves him off with all of his strength. Charles stumbles. For a moment, a dreadful, awful moment, he can feel his feet being suspended in the air, he sees the hysterical elation etched in Erik’s features turning into disbelief, then into shock as Shaw braces himself against the banister, heart still pumping. Then gravity beckons and Charles falls backwards, hitting the stairs hard on his back, again and again and again.

The last thing he remembers about that day is a polished leather boot stomping on the landing mere inches from his nose as Shaw scampers away with all the energy of the lives he has stolen, and Erik’s desperate cry, a ‘no!’ Charles tells himself is about him, not about the man Erik has spent a lifetime hunting down. That is hard to believe, though, what with Hank being the one holding his hand on their way to the hospital and telling him everything is going to be fine.

 

**_“You come back, of course you come back. You apologize, over and over again. You say you never meant to hurt him.”_ **

 

“We want the same things”, Erik sobs, hands fisted in Charles’s sweater and nose buried in his hair. Erik’s body is bent awkwardly over the wheelchair – a memento that their bodies won’t fit together anymore, their minds forever unaligned – trapping him underneath, and Charles has never felt this helpless in his entire life. The last of his strength he puts in his hand pressed flat on Erik’s chest, pushing him gently but firmly away.

“I’m sorry, but we do not.”

 

**_“You won’t give up. He tells you it’s over but you won’t listen.”_ **

 

“If you’d just let me in for a minute, Charles… Just a minute, then I’ll go and I won’t bother you anymore”, Erik cries out pounding his fist on the door.

It’s not the first time. The proof of that is on Charles’ wrists, still bruised where Erik gripped them to pin him down on the bed last week. As soon as Charles opened the door, Erik scooped him up and into the bedroom, all the while staring at him with bright, passionate eyes as he told him frantically, “It’s done, Charles, it’s over… I killed him, I killed him, it’s over…” He laid him on the bed and made love to him – it had to be love, it _had_ to be, or else Charles would go mad – and as Erik pounded into him hard, a litany of _thank you, thank you, thank you_ falling from his lips, Charles thought that maybe this was his punishment, his way of atoning for the nightmares he had all but awaken in Erik’s life.

When he lets Erik in this time and Erik stalks to the wheelchair to pick him up, Charles reaches out with his hands and holds onto him just as hard. He closes his eyes and imagines he’s some scrap of metal Erik is shaping anew.

 

**_“There’s no one he can go to. No one he can tell.”_ **

 

Raven is in Moscow, working through her eighteen-month worth of fieldwork notes with the help of a local consultant whose name has been popping up with an obscene frequency in her phone calls. She sounds so excited as she talks to him about the progress of her article, about the shenanigans her colleagues are up to, about ‘Zaz’, as she often calls the poor fellow, that Charles can’t quite bring himself to burst her bubble. She knows he had someone and now he hasn’t. She knows that that someone left when Charles got in a wheelchair, and that is all she’ll ever need to know.

Charles suspects Hank has always known.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

Charles pauses with a hand on the lock of his briefcase. Hank levels his gaze on him, clever eyes pensive and so much more older than they ought to be. Charles opens his mouth and there it is, the precious opportunity to share his baggage so that someone else would help him carry it some of the way. He could give in. He’d feel better. But what good would it do to saddle the poor lad with such a burden when he can’t do anything about it?

So he locks his briefcase, settles it in his own lap and gives Hank a tired smile. “You worry too much, my friend.” The clock on his desk shows the time to be half past five. “Shall we call it a day then?”

 

 **_“_ ** **_So he resorts to the one thing he_ ** **can** **_do to win back control in his life. He perverts the therapy you’ve insisted on continuing.”_ **

 

He has to grip the back of his chair hard not to let the tremor in his hands show. This is wrong and he shouldn’t… he shouldn’t, but it’s his only way out. So he eases his grip on the chair, smooths down the wrinkles on his trousers and brazens it out.

“Today we won’t work on your memories of the camps, Erik. We’ll work on your memories of me. You want to forget me.”

 

**_“You made me forget?”_ **

**_“He makes you_ ** **want** **_to forget.”_ **

 

“You’re forgetting all about me. You’re forgetting all about us.”

 

**_The next words he doesn’t say. He doesn’t really need to. Charles can tell Erik has figured out the rest by now, his grey eyes blazing, his mouth twisted in a snarl as he stares right into Charles’ soul. And it’s been a while but Charles recognizes that expression and the solid grip on the gun that went with it, and he wonders, briefly and in a sort of feverish exhilaration, if he’s now a step closer to that man in Erik’s eyes._ **

**_Hence the words flitting through his memory remain unsaid. Maybe, if they get out of this alive, Logan will want to hear them._ **

 

“Now listen to me carefully…” Charles leans over Erik’s recumbent form, walking him through the trance with his voice. This is when Charles feels safer, with Erik leisurely lying back in his chair, trusting and utterly pliable. He feels back in control. He feels _wicked_. “Even when you have forgotten the one you love, Erik…” Love. _Love_. He loved Erik once, he probably always will, but right now he feels as if Erik has drained him completely and he has no more love to give. He has pain now where he had hope, anger has swallowed his joy. Erik and he are finally a perfect fit, bound forever through hopeless misery and unquenchable hunger. This is what they have become. This is what they _do_. “You will lie, cheat, kill and _steal_.” An image flashes through his mind, the portrait of a young man in a fur coat and beret. The touch of Erik’s fingers as he pried the painting out of his hands. The touch of Erik’s lips as they kissed, both cocooned under Erik’s coat. “Steal for him a painting...” _It’s the Goya. The_ Witches In The Air _I was telling you about._ “Erik, a painting for the one you hurt.” He is falling, there’s no way he’s going to stop now. “For the one you left behind.”

 

 

 


End file.
